City of Airdrie staffers showed off upgrades to the West Lift Station and Main Reservoir to members of council and local media outlets Tuesday afternoon.

A total of $10.3 million was spent in lifecycle upgrades were done to the station and the reservoir as approved in the 2015 budget. $6.8 million was spent on upgrades to the West Lift Station while $3.5 million was spent on the reservoir upgrades.

The new upgrades took roughly 10 months to complete and will help accommodate the city to roughly 85,000 residents.

“It’s certainly important that as the city grows we keep our infrastructure up to date so we are always looking at capacity and weak points in the system,” said Lorne Stevens, director of community infrastructure with the city of Airdrie.

“We are quite pleased at both the efforts of the developers funding this, our consultants, contractors and staff that have completed these improvements.”

Two new pumps were installed in the West Lift Station to go along with the three existing already. The pumps capacities were upgraded as well now allowing there to be hundreds more horsepower to pump sewage waste to the city of Calgary.

Previously, there were 280 litres per second but that number has been doubled to 600 litres per second.

“If you don’t want backups occurring all the way back to your system or potentially impacting residents in their homes it’s critical,” said Stevens.

“I would call these critical utility systems for the delivery of clean water and ensuring waste is transported efficiently and effectively away back to Calgary for treatment.”

There is an average of 15 million litres of sewage pumped 11 kilometres through pipes that lie roughly 2.5 to four metres below ground to the city of Calgary’s Bonnybrook wastewater treatment plant.

“I think it’s outstanding. The fact we are being proactive and making sure we have capacity… there is nothing more important than having fresh drinking water,” said Mayor Peter Brown, who was in attendance to get a first hand look at the upgrades.

“The sewage improvements are incredible and this is going to give us lots of capacity for the future. I love the investment and they’ve done a great job here.”

The city of Airdrie currently maintains over 258 kilometres of sanitary lines with a total of 2,511 sanitary manholes across the city which provide access for inspections and flushing.

Interim upgrades happen all the time, but Stevens predicted it has been roughly four to five years since the last major upgrades were done.